Canopy
by uniform beautiful
Summary: A Jet x Smellerbee drabble series.
1. Lessons

My first in a drabble series for this ship. Like most drabble series, the mood and content of each will range greatly. So T to be safe, don't expect anything from me.

* * *

**Canopy**

_"Help, I'm alive, my heart keeps beating like a hammer"--Metric_

Daggers are sharp. Smellerbee learned that not too long before she joined the Freedom Fighters. The blade had felt slick and hot--almost like a slug--when it punctured her skin and traveled down; deep into her flesh. She had cried out, and bled.

It was then that she understood the lesson of pain.

---

Rain is cold. Jet stayed up into the deep, early morning. The water had stung so badly that it became warm in that dangerous way that icy things become hot. He had heard tales about people caught in snowstorms for so long that they took their clothes off and ran around, feeling warm and energized. Right before passing out and dying.

He lowered his head and let the warmth freeze his blood.

---

Dirt tastes awful.

Getting your ass beat was one thing, but then tasting the dirt of your failure when you hit the ground so hard that your head rings is even worse. Smellerbee spat the gritty debris out of her mouth and glared up angrily. He smiled and held out a hand to help her up.

---

Old wounds bleed. The old scar that awkwardly ran down his leg broke open one night and wouldn't stop gushing. He felt frail and weak as all his life story ran out over the sheets like the fancy red wine he would never be able to afford spilled over silk. Could one have this much blood in their body?

He curled up and tried not to think that he might die.

---

Change is needed.

Especially if you're a girl who can't figure all this shit out, who feels like she can never grow into a woman until these ghosts stop haunting her.

Maybe if she continued to fight like she did, talked like she did, and dress like she did she would wake up one morning a man. Maybe if she continued to stand on edge and defend everything she locked up she would wake up one morning alone.

---

Forests are vast.

But not even all the towering trees and flowing streams and mottled sunlight and sweeping acres can hide the secrets that slither about like a snake through water. Her secrets, his secrets, their secrets, all came out from under the current and disturbed the calm surface of things.

Don't ask, don't tell.

Don't look me in the eye and tell me that you don't know what I'm talking about.

Don't stand there and try to tell me you didn't say these things.

If you're not careful, it will come back to you. And spring up and bite you when you didn't expect it to.

---

The secrets they try to keep locked up will cut worse than any dagger, sting more than any freezing rain, taste worse than any bile, bleed harder than any wound, teach the lessons no mentor can teach, and run wild through any forest.


	2. Valiant

**Valiant**

"_The broken innocence of a child is by far the most horrifying phenomenon you could ever experience."_

The memory wasn't clear, as was the case with most memories.

Smoke filled the air as the shabby wood house burned. The clear blue sky was filled with smudgy grey like ink poured into water. Everything had happened so fast, and her young, naïve mind could not figure it out. She had thought that Fire Nation soldiers quartered in town were going to be good. She had been told they were going to help. Her mother said that they were friendly men, but her father, late one night, had whispered the truth to her. _These men are evil, _he had said, _I want you to get out now before they kill you._

That knife he had been crafting for her had been lying on the floor. It was wavy from being out of the cast for too long, but still sharp. She had turned it towards the man, and as blood splattered across her face, she screamed wildly. No longer a human, but a savage beast. A cat with sharp fangs prowling the night, a shark in the ocean surrounded by a cloud of red. Sharp claws the product of precise evolution tearing into the flesh of prey. A monster hiding under a child's bed, an evil thing controlling a nightmare like a master of puppets.

He was long dead when she stopped. His firebending was no more. But it would never bring her father back, no matter how many times that darkened blade punctured his flesh, no matter how much his blood pooled around him.

She wiped his gore from her face. In front of the mirror the blood smudged into streaks.

Her feet carried her to the forest. Now that they had taken her father and mother, they would come after her. But that boy. He had carried her out of hysteria; he stood tall and strong and framed by a forest he had conquered.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"It's okay, I'm here to protect you," the boy said kindly. He smiled at her and she believed him--this valiant boy like a prince out of a tale.


	3. Hair

**Hair**

"_What are you willing to sacrifice?"_

When Bee had first joined the Freedom Fighters, her hair was her distinguishing feature. She hadn't cut it since birth, and it hung long and wavy and unruly.

And she loved it. She brushed it morning, noon, and night. One hundred even strokes down the several feet of thick, shiny locks. And she always styled it differently: curly, straight, up, down, braided, loose. Meticulously winding it around twigs, securing it in place with a threadbare blanket, washing it constantly, burning her hands to heat it into place, mixing up concoctions to keep it beautiful and sleek as a black tabby cat. It was her prized possession, and made up for her other traits which lacked beauty.

But Jet told her to cut it. And she did. A simple demand was enough for her to rid herself of her life's work. She wanted to please him, quaint as it was.

She took out her knife and gathered it all in one fist. Before his eyes she slit its throat and let it fall to the ground.

"Girls can't fight or defend themselves with hair that long. And you spent too much time on it anyway."

She held back her tears to accept the approving pat on her shoulder.

"I don't like girls with long hair, anyways." A whispered secret that she believed for the next years of her life.

From then on, she cut her hair short regularly, and it became routine. Eventually her hair stopped growing altogether, and the shaggy mop of hair that was once beautiful tangled itself about her head. It was only in her dreams that her hair was long and she was a girl again. When she awoke from such dreams, her hand would involuntarily move to her shoulder to gather her hair for the morning's brush. But none would be there, and she'd remember where it went and why.

She had thought it would make her better in his eyes, but then, out of nowhere, the girl with the long hair--almost as long as hers had once been--came out of the cities and captured Jet with her blue, sparkling eyes. With her soft, wavy hair that she only styled in one way she was far more beautiful than Bee could ever hope to be. And then she understood the betrayal; his for lying to her, her for cutting off her hair, and how there was no sound when it landed on the forest floor.


	4. Mia

This story rings a personal note, and my deepest sympathies to anyone who is in or ever was in this situation. Genuinely in it.

**Mia**

"_I think the biggest lie I've ever heard is, 'Stop. You're already thin enough.'"_

She was so skinny. He was afraid to touch her, let alone battle with her. Would she just crack and fall apart? He made sure she ate a lot of food, but it never had an effect. Her body remained bony and sharp like a dying blackberry bush. Just a husk, a dry swamp reed blowing in the cold winter wind.

Her skin was sallow like the gruesome color of pus welling up out of infected flesh. It sagged, like she was tired; or dead. She collapsed so many times during the day that she was ultimately useless to the gang. Everyone noticed, but no one said anything. They all knew she was a tragic case; and that the scars of her recent mental trauma ran deep. But her blackouts and weakness were too hard to ignore. The food they all saw her gobble down almost had a negative effect, and day after day she became thinner and thinner.

He approached her, even though he knew he shouldn't. The emotion he had planned on using: caring---brotherly, empathetic---dissolved, and a sudden anger boiled out of him, sparked by the sight of her spindly spider body.

"You know, you're fucking _everyone_ up! What the hell is wrong with you?" he spat.

Tired, tired eyes. They almost made him feel the utter exhaustion worrying away at her. "I think I'm just sick is all. It'll pass," she said; and he realized he hadn't heard her speak in a long time. Her voice had grown hoarse and raspy, and she sure smelled like sickness.

"Do you need a doctor? Because you know we can't afford one."

"I'm fine."

But he learned her truth when he found her coughing in the woods. And he knew he'd never be able to find a doctor to fix her ailment.

* * *

I think bulimia explains a lot about Smellerbee. Why does she always wear gloves? Why is her voice so hoarse?


End file.
